Fred popped the question during a hike in the Catskills. We were sitting on a rock, resting.
“Ruth, will you marry me?”
“Fred, you know I will.”
“Fine, but I have two conditions.”
“Uh-oh,” I thought to myself. “They’d better have nothing to do with that other woman.”
“First, we have to get married by December thirty-first. That way we can file our taxes jointly which will save us both a lot of money.”
I should have guessed that a man who would sleep with me but not eat with me to save money would come up with such a condition. “Fine, Fred, but you have to help make the arrangements since it’s all so soon.”
“Of course. And then I don’t want you to tell anyone for two days.”
Now, that was a tough condition for me to accept. I could say yes, but I wasn’t sure I could fulfill my end of the deal when it came to such important news! “Fred, why two days? Can’t I even tell Miriam?”
“I want my parents to know first is the reason, and if you tell Miriam, she’s never going to keep it to herself. So you have to promise.”
I promised—and I even kept the promise—and on December 10, 1961, we were married at the Windermere Hotel on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. All our friends were there, but our honeymoon lasted only one night, as Fred had to fly to Kansas on business.
Six months after our wedding, I became pregnant with our son Joel. Miriam was six when Joel was born, but there wasn’t any sibling rivalry, in part because she was so much older and in part because I showered her with gifts to make sure that she wouldn’t be jealous. All in all, I think I did a good job of raising my two children. One proof is that they both followed in my footsteps and received doctorates in education. (Yes, the “Dr.” in Dr. Ruth comes from my EdD, not an MD, as many people mistakenly think—though I repeat that I am not a medical doctor over and over.) But what is difficult for parents is to keep up with the times, both in the general sense and in the personal one.
Let me give you an example. When Miriam was a teen, she begged me to get her own phone.
“But all the kids have them,” she said.
“Maybe I should have sent you to public school where all the kids wouldn’t have so much.”
“It doesn’t cost that much.”
“And how would you know?”
“How can I stay in touch with my friends?”
“You’re with them all day long—isn’t that enough? You have to talk to them all night long too?”
“We talk about schoolwork. If I could work together with them on the phone, I could get better grades.”
“Miriam, I wasn’t born yesterday. The only subject matter that will be in these vital communications will be about boys. And it’s not like we don’t have a phone.”
“Which you’re on all the time!”
We had these fights over and over, but I wouldn’t give in. When I was growing up, the idea of a young person having a phone of her own was unheard of. I doubt that even that Rothschild girl had one. To me it would have been spoiling Miriam, plus it would have been a distraction from her schoolwork. But you know what? I was wrong. I did spend a lot of time on the phone, so our home phone wasn’t really available to her. And to her generation, talking on the phone was a key aspect to socialization. Not that Miriam wasn’t popular, but I now understand the problems not having her own phone caused. And look at all the fights we could have avoided.
Joie de vivre can’t be selfish. If the people around you are miserable because of your actions, that’s going to make it harder for you to enjoy your life too. Certainly there are times when parents have to be tough, but you also have to be able to bend. You can’t automatically say, “What was good enough for me is good enough for my children”; the world you grew up in no longer exists. And even if the world your spouse lived in was similar to yours, it wasn’t the same either. So you have to give those around you some space to live and grow on their own. Spouses should do some things together, but it’s also fine for them to do some things by themselves—though when the changes that result are major, the acceptance rate may not exactly match it. Certainly, going from Ruth Westheimer to Dr. Ruth wasn’t that easy on my family.
Before I was Dr. Ruth, our family would go to a restaurant like everyone else, anonymously. But at one point that was no longer possible, and it didn’t sit well. We did get to go to fancier restaurants than we had before, but often the reason we were there—my celebrity—got in the way. One restaurant I would take our family to was the Sea Grill, which overlooks the skating rink at Rockefeller Center. The maître d’ would greet us warmly, and we’d get a table right by the window so we could see the skaters gliding by. But then other customers would stop by, either just to say hi or ask for an autograph.
“Mom, why do you put up with these interruptions?” Miriam or Joel would ask.
“Because the reason you’re sitting at this prime table is because people are aware of who I am, and with fame comes certain obligations.”
“You think Frank Sinatra gives autographs?”
“I’m not Frank Sinatra, and I bet even he gives the occasional autograph. Miriam, I have to go to the bathroom—come with me?”
“Why do you need me to go with you?”
“Because if I go alone, I’ll get stopped by women asking me questions and I’ll never get back to the table.”
When I was not with family members but people I worked with, they understood what it’s like to be famous; they’d go out of their way to make life easy for me. Thankfully I never got so famous that I had to deal with mobs that might even be dangerous, but my fame did lead to some awkward moments between me and my family members. Because of the sometimes negative reactions on both parts—them at being inconvenienced by celebrity, me being frustrated by their lack of appreciation of how I needed to act—I often kept my family away from events that I was invited to just because I was Dr. Ruth.
But there were some notable exceptions, such as when 60 Minutes did a profile on me. Diane Sawyer came to our apartment in Washington Heights to do the sit-down interview portion. Under normal circumstances, I would have told Fred to stay away, but Fred was such a big fan of Diane that I didn’t have the heart. So there we were in my living room, sitting on our Danish couch with Diane across from us and two cameras trained on us. It’s an interview of me, but who does Diane address first? Fred.
“Mr. Westheimer, tell me, what is your sex life like?”
“Diane, the shoemaker’s children don’t have any shoes.”
I should have been furious, but you know what? That story became a staple of all my lectures because it gets a big laugh. I don’t talk about my sex life, just the way I don’t talk about the sex lives of my clients. I’m a big believer in privacy, especially when it comes to sex. But a story like this one allows me to deflect the issue without seeming like I have anything to hide.
On the other hand, when I was invited to attend a party in the Playboy Mansion, I didn’t have the heart to tell Freddie that he couldn’t come. By this point I was about sixty, and it would have been silly of me to feel jealous of naked women swimming in the grotto. I couldn’t compete with hand-picked twenty-year-olds when I was twenty, so why deny Freddie the pleasure of feeding his fantasies? In the long run, it could only benefit me because I certainly wasn’t going to leave him there without my supervision! (Not to mention the supervision of a gay friend, Greg Willenborg, who was there with us.)
Jealousy is a problem in many relationships. One spouse or the other overreacts when their partner shows some interest in someone else of the opposite sex. In fact, many people grow jealous of their partner’s fantasy lovers. That’s a big mistake. After years of being together, many people need fantasy to become sufficiently aroused for sex . . . with their partner! As long as your partner is having sex only with you, it doesn’t matter what is going on in his or her head. Joie de vivre requires you to allow your partner to have as much joy as you
do. Maybe you have fantasies or maybe you don’t. But trying to control what is going on inside your partner’s head is just not a viable strategy. Making them feel guilty about their thoughts won’t spread joie de vivre; it will stifle it.
I understand there are some people, mostly women, who have body-image problems. They’ve put on some weight, maybe after having had a few children, and it lowers their self-esteem. Such a reaction is certainly going to take away from one’s joie de vivre. The first key to solving such issues is, as I just said, not to pretend you know what is going on in your partner’s mind. Maybe he’s fantasizing about the latest rail-thin supermodel, or maybe he’s telling the truth when he says he likes your added curves. Keep in mind that larger thighs may be accompanied by larger breasts, which may be more his focus. If you look at old paintings, those curves of yours were once the ideal. They may not be what Madison Avenue chooses to focus on, but that doesn’t mean your partner’s innate appetites are controlled by what flashes on various screens. He may have a natural inclination to appreciate more in a woman than less.
It’s also important for a woman with a body-image problem not to try to keep covered up or have sex only in the dark. Many men need some visual stimulation to become aroused. Take that away from them and you might be creating a self-fulfilling prophesy,—that is, a dying sex life—not because of your added weight but your reaction to it.
If you want to feel joie de vivre, it will help for you to live it. So parade your body in front of your partner, show it off, try to feel good about it, and see how he reacts. (And I’d say the same to men who are overweight.) That’s not to say that there aren’t good reasons to try to reduce your weight. There are health considerations to being overweight that shouldn’t be ignored. But while you’re working on your weight to become as healthy as possible, don’t become obsessed with it.
My marriage to Fred lasted almost thirty-six years and ended only because Fred passed away at far too young an age in 1997. Fred was in good health and an avid skier, but he suffered a stroke and wound up in Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, in Washington Heights. In part because of who his wife was, he was put in the luxury wing and received the best possible care. When I wasn’t by his side, I would go to the lounge area, which was beautifully lit by the light pouring in from huge skylights and filled with the music of a professional piano player seated at a grand piano. See what I mean about it being luxurious? But I didn’t have too much time to enjoy the surroundings because not only was I worried about Fred, but at the time I was busy reading the galleys of Sex for Dummies, which had to be approved under a tight deadline.
Under the wonderful care of Dr. Stephan Mayer, Fred recovered from that stroke and eventually even went back to work, which was very important to him, as it made him both happy and proud to be able to continue to lead a useful and productive life. Then he had another stroke. I’d been out at an Oscar party. I called him to say I was on my way home and he said he was fine. When I arrived, I found him sitting up in bed. He said to me, “Ruth, help me. Another stroke. I have a bad headache.”
I called 9-1-1, and he was taken back to Columbia. Dr. Mayer rushed to the hospital, as I had called him too, but this time there was no recovery. Fred never uttered another word. Ten days later, he passed away. And I graduated from being an orphan to being a widow—a much tougher role. A child is resilient, while an older adult is less so. A child is supposed to break away from her parents at some point, and even at the age of ten, some of the seeds of independence are already sown. Unlike a child halfway out the door, in a good marriage, with every passing day you’re in more deeply.
“Go out and be active,” is what I would tell anyone in the situation I found myself in, but I know how hard that can be. Luckily I was already a celebrity, so I was able to engage in all the distractions I needed rather than just mope around in an empty apartment. When each day’s mail brings more invitations to events than you can possibly attend, it’s much easier to just dive into that river of social activity and let it float you away from your misery.
There are so many kinds of tears, and you can cry many of them all at the same time. When I was on that train all those years ago, having no idea what the future held for the German Jews left behind, I was crying partially out of frustration. I hadn’t wanted to go to Heiden; I’d wanted to stay with my parents and grandmother, so I felt that I’d been treated unfairly. I was lonely, so that brought on tears too. I was afraid of what this school I was going to would be like. I’d given away the one doll I’d brought, and now I missed it and all my other toys. And I missed each of my family members in a different way, so remembering my grandmother’s hugs brought on a different set of emotions than remembering walking to synagogue with my father. And while I was only ten, I’d witnessed the wrath of the Nazis against the Jews. I’d seen the burned-out hulk of our synagogue. I’d seen all the shop windows shattered. And I’d seen my father taken away by black-booted soldiers. I was afraid for my family more so than I was afraid for myself, but I also felt guilty that I had left them behind to face the Nazis without me. So I had more than my share of reasons to cry.
Have you ever been faced with a sad situation and tried to hold back your tears? Because there are so many sources for each tear, it’s hard. You force back one emotion only to get hit by another. So you stuff them into some interior closet—but then when you need your emotions, you discover they’re locked up, out of your reach. When you want to love someone, you can’t, because not only is the sadness hidden away, but so is every other emotion along with it. And the longer this goes on, the more terrified you become of the flood of emotions that might erupt were you to unlock that door. So crying and letting the emotions out is a good thing and actively promotes joie de vivre. That I was only ten and without the resources to keep those tears at bay ended up helping me to cope. Because over time, rather than try to lock up all my emotions, I learned to keep some under wraps while releasing others, which allowed me to be able to love, laugh, and cry as I continued on through my life.
CHAPTER VI
Enjoy the Crazy Turns Life Takes
What started me on the path to stardom was losing my job. The School of Hard Knocks has a lot to offer in terms of upward mobility, though during class you’re probably going to feel more like a failure than a rising star. And very often, you’re at the top of your game when failure happens, which makes the fall that much worse. For example, one time when this happened to me, I was one of the most popular professors and my classes were full to the brim. The head of the department was having problems getting enough students to sign up for her class, which should have made me watch my back; but as often happens, I never saw that blow coming. Yet as miserable as I felt staring at that pink slip, it gave me the freedom a bit later on to accept the offer that led to that pink cover of People! So you never know.
Talking about Sex Isn’t So Crazy
In 1967 the money ran out for the public health project I was working on, and that left me out of a job. I began asking around for leads and was told that Planned Parenthood was looking for a research associate. I applied and not only did I get the job, but a week later the man who was running the project quit and I got his job! My bad luck had turned to good luck.
My role was to train and supervise two dozen women as paraprofessionals who were to be sent out to collect the contraception and abortion histories of about two thousand women in Harlem.
At the end of my first day, I came home and said to my husband, Fred: “These people are crazy! All they talk about all day long is sex!” About a week later, though, I decided that they weren’t so crazy and sex was a topic with which I wanted a closer relationship. Like most people, I considered sex to be a private matter—and I still do—but it also became obvious that people needed help with their sex lives, and providing that help was a true calling.
Today, because I now talk about sex all day long myself, many people assume that my views on the subject have undergone a radical transfor
mation, that I’ve become some sort of libertine who thinks that any type of sex done any which way with anybody is perfectly fine. While it’s true I know a lot more about what goes on in people’s bedrooms than I did back then, my overall perspective isn’t much different. As I say over and over again, I am old-fashioned and a square. I want people in a relationship to have the best sex possible, but I’m not in favor of some of these modern sexual practices such as “friends with benefits.” I bring this up because if you thought making this decision to go into the field of sex came easily to me, you’d be wrong. My background as an Orthodox Jew raised in Germany was a very conservative one. That marriage manual was in a locked cabinet, remember? Sex was not a subject that was bandied about in the home where I grew up. And one reason for that was the manner in which I came into the world.
My paternal grandmother had engaged my mother to be a housekeeper. Nowhere in the job description had there been any mention of having sex with her son, but that’s what happened. And since they didn’t use contraceptives, one of those unintended pregnancies that I preach against morning, noon, and night took place, and I was the result. It’s an ironic twist, but it doesn’t change my opinion that contraceptive use is important. Maybe that attitude was instilled in me by my grandmother because she was somewhat cold toward my mother, and the reason was clearly based on the manner in which I was conceived. So given my upbringing, though I’ve been a sex therapist for many years now, I still sometimes blush when talking about sex in public.
People who are sexually frustrated will find it harder to find joie de vivre in their lives, but there is a difference between understanding how to achieve sexual satisfaction and being completely open about sex. How you were raised does affect your attitude toward sex. Some people can come from a home where sex was a topic that was never discussed and learn to be more open-minded, while others from such a background always have difficulty with the subject. But you can be a very private person and still have orgasms. Your life doesn’t have to be an open book in order to find sexual satisfaction. It’s true that as part of a couple, the more openly you can discuss your sex life with your partner, the better the communication, the better your sex life is likely to be. But there are many couples that don’t talk about sex, and yet both halves of the couple find satisfaction in their sex lives.
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